Govt Allows ‘Work From Anywhere’ Facility For BPO Employees

Bhubaneswar: The Centre on Friday issued guidelines that allow ‘work from home’ and ‘work from anywhere’ facilities for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) employees.

The guidelines aim to simplify or remove frequent reporting and other obligations for Other Service Providers (OSPs) that include BPOs, KPOs, ITES and call centres among others.

With this, the registration requirement for OSPs is no more required. Also, BPO firms engaged in data-related work have been taken out of the ambit of OSP regulations.

Moreover, according to the new guidelines, the requirements such as deposit of bank guarantees, the requirement for static IPs, the publication of network diagram, and penal provisions have also been removed.

The new guidelines have also done away with several other requirements making it possible for these organisations to adopt ‘Work from Home’ and ‘Work from Anywhere’ policies.

Before the government’s announcement of the guidelines, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had tweeted, “The prowess of India’s IT sector is recognised globally and the government is committed to doing everything possible to ensure a conducive environment for growth and innovation in India.”

“Committed to furthering ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and making India a tech hub! GoI has significantly simplified Other Service Provider (OSP) guidelines of the Telecom Department. Compliance burdens of BPO industry will be greatly reduced due to this,” the PM added.